Live & Work Longer: Great Expectations – 2

Great expectations. Work – and live longer? Some studies indicate a positive effect for those who choose to actively work longer in later life. And then there’s the debate, that for those who do hard physical work, they won’t be able to perform at the level they could when they were younger, but who’s to say that work in later life is to be of the same nature?

Our relationship with the word work is part of the narrative shift we need to follow here. It’s not an age specific thing though. This narrative shift on the concept of “work” is disrupting our conversation at all stages of life. We nervously twitch as we move back and forth on the 21st century definition base of “job/labour market” to “work and talent market”.

More the expectation, and a growing reality, is that working longer will become the norm when a core reason is to supplement an income stream to meet the basic necessaries of living longer. Learning how to revisit this equation, conducting an exercise of recalibration, becomes one the new essential competencies as we age.

What an opportunity it is to examine what the nature of work can be in later life. What do you really want to do; and what does the world really need you for?

Perchance what this could mean is that we are returning, as in centuries long before ours, to a time when at every age we will all engaged in a craft, being self-employed.